Small Success Thursday Comes to CatholicMom.com - Win Big!

Editor’s note: Today, I’d like to thank Sherry Antonetti for bringing the great weekly feature “Small Success Thursday” here to its new home at CatholicMom.com. Our readers may be familiar with this feature, which first found its home at Faithandfamilylive.com. To celebrate it’s launch here at CatholicMom.com, I’ve gathered a prize package full of goodies (including two holy cards blessed by Pope Benedict XVI at the beatification of Blessed John Paul II). List your link below this week and next week, and one lucky linker will be randomly selected to win this package. Link twice and you’ll be entered to win twice. And I reserve the right to add more goodies to the package you see below. Here’s to counting our blessings! Lisa

Small Success Thursday

This new feature is designed to help all of us busy parents to stop and recognize how in the past week, we’ve poured out part of ourselves for others. Because parenting can begin to feel like one chore after another if one doesn’t recognize that this process is growing little human beings into adults educated and polished and steeped in the faith, it is important to stop and count the little victories. Too often, life blips by with the errands and the to-do lists and the paperwork and daily chores that must be managed like homework and bath time and bedtime and meals. The micro events of our lives often go unmarked, but here is a place to feel free to trumpet your small steps towards a more luminous life.

Small Success Thursday is about all those triumphs over minutia, over chaos, over clutter, over laundry, over homework, over dullness and monotony. It is also about the macro events in one’s life, like births and growing up, driver’s licenses, graduations and sacraments, date nights and moving. So join in, brag a little. List a few of your triumphs of the day on your blog and link here. Then go visiting the others who participate. You’ll meet a bunch of neat women who are out there working and trying just like you, to do little things with great love. Be sure to leave a comment. It’s part of the fun!

I’ll start:

This week I:

1) Survived being a solo mom from Wednesday to Sunday owing to husband’s business retreat.
2) Stayed on my South Beach diet despite #1 and the very strong temptation of leftover Easter chocolate in the house. Down 9 pounds, 10 to go.
3) My daughter was in a play and my other daughter opted to babysit so I could see it and pay attention. It was a lovely treat and her acting chops and comedic timing were pretty awesome.
4) Edited my WIP, The Book of Helen. My goal is to have her finished by the end of May.
5) Had the conk on the head thanks to a fellow blogger’s post to reach out to my friends more and it was like fresh air blowing through my brain and heart, why I forget what a source of joy they are to me, both old and new, I’ll never know.
6) Paid the bills and conquered half the laundry.
7) Preparing for my daughter’s confirmation. Please pray for her as she becomes an adult in the Church.

Now it’s your turn! Remember, by listing your link you not only spread the good news but you’re entered to win our prize package! Please note that commenters who leave a “small success” will also be entered to win.

About Author

Sherry Antonetti is a mother of ten children, published author of The Book of Helen and a freelance writer of humor and family life columns. You can read additional pieces from her blog, http://sherryantonettiwrites.blogspot.com.

20 Comments

Sherry, thanks so very much for starting this new feature at CatholicMom.com. My success for this week was surviving the three days my husband was out of town on a work trip. Can’t wait for him to get home!

This week I completed 3 First Communion rehearsals (with a total of 81 children) and got the information for the bulletin, the program, and the liturgy notes to the appropriate people in the rectory IN TIME for this week’s First Communion Masses.

Please pray for our First Communicants, their parents, and catechists for a grace-filled experience. And that this will bring some parents back to the sacraments themselves.

Elizabeth, it’s great that you can share your successes here in the blog comments and I will definitely enter folks who do that into our drawing. Thanks for being of such service to those families who are celebrating First Communion. What a gift!

I’m not a blog writer either (yet?) but I would also like to share! I just finished up the twelve weeks of “Theology of the Body for Teens” with my senior class last night and in re-capping what they learned, the students recognized the need to surround themselves with ‘reminders’ that will help them to stay on the path of holiness. Recounting our successes for the week (even the small ones) will keep our minds and hearts on doing things that are successful in keeping us on the path! GREAT idea! My successes this week:

1.) Planned a senior prom dinner for two daughters going to prom on Saturday, a First Holy Communion party for my second grade son and wrote a pro-life witness talk for a speaking engagement at Mother/Daughter banquet on Monday AHEAD of schedule!
2.) Cleaned and deleted things from my life that were holding me back from authentic love and holiness.
3.) Spent extra time with each of my seven children who are still at hoome helping them to create good memories of their childhood and corresponded in meaningful ways with the two older girls who are out on their own.
4.) Thanked God for my parents who gave me life and brought me into the world 47 years ago today! Woohoo!

I was going to do a post today and schedule it for later, but wouldn’t you know, my blog server is down right now. (Perhaps that’s a sign that I should use this time for something OTHER THAN blogging? Nah, couldn’t be!)

Anyway, here are my small successes this week:
1. Got my hair cut. So now I feel pretty. 🙂

2. Had lunch with two different friends on two different days. It was very therapeutic. Why don’t I do that more often?!?

3. Made a doctor’s appointment for a physical. We won’t talk about how it took six months to do that, but will focus instead on the fact that hey! I did it!

Thanks for bringing this to CM, Lisa and Sherry! I so missed this at F&F and I admit, I forgot about it at Sherry’s place. 🙂

George, what a great thing! Thanks for sharing your success! Have you connected with the local Catholic hospitals? I would think that asking them to give a flyer to all new parents as part of their discharge packet would be a great idea for reaching prospective families. Good luck!!

Haven’t done this in eons. I’ve been out of touch –
1. Not pulling my hair out this week as we are on week 4 with the 14 year old home after sustaining a nasty concussion at lacrosse – Hanging on to all the prayers being offered up for him.
2. Managing to reduce water use as we wait for new septic system. (Not easy with a big family – laundromats have made me so grateful to the simple pleasure of a laundry room)
3. Cleaned up two piles in my room and tackling the office! (The hidden blessing in having to stay home with the kid mentioned in #1.
4. Taught the last of two confirmation classes I did this year – going to miss the kids over summer – teenagers are awesome!

1) Visited a friend at the hospital. I have never been comfortable visiting people at hospitals–even for babies!
2) Folded several baskets of laundry that have been sitting in the basement for a long time.
3) Vacuumed dirt and leaves from our screened in porch, thus dramatically expanding our play space.
4) Conjured dinner out of nothing on a day when we really, really needed to go to the grocery store.

1)I welcomed home my adult daughter whose been discerning for a year with the Carmelite Sisters of LA
@) I took my teen daughter to her 1st Track Meet; and she won 2 Gold Medals & a Bronze ~ a very encouraging event for her 🙂
3) Supported my husband in a months long, difficult work situation that has spilled into every weekend since Oct.
4) Applauded my adult son for killing a 5 ft. rattlesnake (disgusting and revolting as it was.)

Made thru this week – closed on a house- major packing while having an achy back. I have stilled taken time each day to spend with my 4 daughters- met my goal to try to make moving less stressful for them. Thanking God for unexpected blessings. I like the idea of focusing on small successes – those are usually the overlooked ones

Thanks for reminding me to be joyful for the little things. Please enter me for a chance to win. My small successes include planning my baby’s baptism,making a substantial dent in the laundry, and putting away clothes, unpacking a few boxes, preparing my child for first holy communion, planning a birthday party, tackling house chores. Prayers for first communicants gladly accepted. Thanks.